so its been quite some time, there are many things i could write here, many adventures have been had since last i wrote anything, but for now, i am just going to say read the below:
The heat rises off the bitumen like steam, cloying into my skin and hair. I stand on what I laughingly call a footpath watching for a break in the traffic. Sure the footpath is separated from the road by a curb but its function bears little resemblance to the footpaths I am used to. Street side vendors hawk their wears, selling everything from meals complete with beer, through to shoe repairs, water and cigarettes. Every 50 feet or so someone lounges on a motorbike, their feet tucked under them like they were in their living room. Men and women stand in front of shop doors, calling to passers by. Weaving your way along the sidewalk, you may imagine youself to be relatively safe, until suddenly a motorbike comes roaring up the curb, weaves around you and a street side vendor, past the truck going slowly down the street and back out into the traffic.

So I stand warily on the curb, waiting for a break in the traffic so that I can cross the road. There are not many traffic lights here in District Three of Ho Chi Minh City, I cross amidst the cars, trucks, buses, motorbikes, bicycles and pedestrians or I don’t cross at all. There is no waiting in an orderly fashion for a little green man to tell me that I may cross safely.

The sun beats down on my head, the dust and steam rise from the road and I stand watching. My heart is beating faster, my breathing is shallow and rapid. The traffic is a vibrating, pulsating thing. It is no longer just individual vehicles but a many limbed creature that I can not predict or control. Motorbikes weave in and out of cars in terrifying figures of eights, never stopping, barely slowing, cars, trucks and buses, fighting for room.

I have been told that the only way to cross the road is just to cross, venture out into the maelstrom, keep a steady pace and cross the road. I make a couple of false starts, there are no cars or motorbikes immediately near me and I step out onto the road, my heart in my mouth, my pulse quickening but suddenly, as if from nowhere, a motorbike is heading for me, horn honking and I quail, quickly stepping back onto the curb. All around me the noise of thousands of people, hundreds of vehicles fills my mind, I stare into the road and I am sure I will never make it.

I stand so long on the edge of the road that twice a taxi pulls along side to offer me a lift. I shake my head and start walking as though I were merely pausing on my way down the street. I laugh inwardly at the thought of asking a taxi driver to take me to the other side of the road. I can’t believe this. How can such a little thing be so hard. I am an intelligent woman, I have travelled, I am confident, how can such a small thing be so difficult.
In the time that I have stood watching, hoping for a gap to open, I have witnessed a number of people achieve what I am trying to do. They make it look like the easiest thing in the world. They have all made it to the other side of the road without incident, all alive, unharmed and already long gone about their day. A middle aged Vietnamese woman stops beside me for a moment and as I look at her, it occurs to me that I could cross the road with her. When she steps out into the traffic, so do I. She makes her way steadily across the road, eyes peeled for oncoming vehicles, motorbikes stream around us both, but while my heart leaps every time, she appears unpeturbed. After what seems an age during which I was certain I would die at least a dozen times we come to the other side of the road. The woman disappears into the crowd while I stand still for a moment, waiting for my legs to stop shaking.

I turn around towards the road again in triumph. Looking at the teeming street my heart sinks as it occurs to me that to get home I will have to do it all again.